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OCAU News |
3DMark03 Patch 330
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Wednesday, 28-May-2003 15:51:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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FutureMark have released Patch 330 for their popular 3D graphics benchmark, 3DMark03. We've mirrored the patch file here. If you don't have 3DMark03 installed, you'll need the original installer - we have it here.
So, why the patch? Well, we need to catch up on some stuff from the last few days. According to FutureMark, they found that NVIDIA's drivers were optimising themselves specifically for 3DMark, giving an artificially high score. NVIDIA say that they aren't part of FutureMark's (expensive) developer program and that FutureMark are deliberately trying to make their product look bad, to which FutureMark have responded. Since then, ATI have come forward and admitted doing a similar thing, but to a lesser degree. FutureMark have hinted that there may be further optimisations in the ATI drivers. There's a comment from one of the 3DMark programmers here on Beyond3D.
The big debate is whether these optimisations represent something that drivers are supposed to do, or if the companies involved are actually cheating to make their products seem quicker compared to their competitors than they really are. Of course, there's also usual question of how valid any benchmark really is. There's a lot of discussion (and even more heated debate and wild speculation) going on about this at the moment, naturally. TheReg have their thoughts posted, and Tech-Report ran some benchmarks themselves to see what the fuss is about. Threads here and here in our forums and here on Slashdot.
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